My oh my...what do we have here?

This project has been a long time coming. Have a look at this post here to see what we started with after more than ten (10) years of being left alone. The extension area was originally built for extra sleeping when family came to stay. The original kitchen sits at the back of Obachan's but it's pretty dark and we wanted to capture and enjoy the sunshine and bbq's at the front of the house. So it was time to transform this room into the new kitchen.

Extension area-  right-hand side with aluminum doors

So we started lifting up the old carpet which was laying over the top of tatami mats which were very old. We are going to recycle the tatami mats outside in the garden, which I will share in another post when we do. We are all about recycle here at Obachan's!

Behind the laminate panelling we found to my delight, wooden boards.

We also found a crumbling mud wall, which we are thinking of removing to make a door way that connects to the main tatami area.

Now comes the messy work and a scary discovery......

What did we find........?

.............but a giant killer bee nest!!!

Apparently, you can sell these things for a sum of money because they are considered lucky! Any takers?! A strange but interesting discovery was that the nest was full of leaves. Maybe after the bees moved out, something else moved in.

We had to saw the nest off which was pretty secured to the timber ceiling!

My oh my! Something we weren't expecting in our ceiling.

Another baby one was found nearby, but its occupants had abandoned it.

So we pulled up old carpet and tatami, found and removed a killer bees nest! I think with all  the dust and dirt we deserve an onsen tonight!